Wednesday, April 11, 2007

If you haven't seen lib.rario.us yet, it's worth a few moments to check it out. It's like the social bookmarking site del.icio.us, but users add references to books and DVDs. I've been adding a number of TG references that can be found by looking up the tag transgender. If you're interested in all the media I've been looking at, you can search by user (my username is meadhbh.) Best of all, they publish these things as RSS feeds, so you can include them in blog sidebars.

Monday, April 2, 2007

When I was a little girl, I learned integrated circuit design from "the standard" text, Introduction to VLSI Design by Mead Carver and Lynn Conway. In the early 2000's Lynn de-cloaked and came out as a Trans-woman. So in addition to training a generation of chip designers and helping develop the underpinnings of modern digital processors, she's also started collecting resources for people trying to understand transgender issues.

Her site at LynnConway.Com is a must-see for trans-folk and the people that love them (or at least are trying to understand them.) Also... the site seems to currently be hosted by the Electrical Engineering department at the University of Michigan. So... kudos to them!

I have a secret weakness for television dramas. The good ones are the ones where, like opera, both sides of the human soul are extracted and examined. Normally that means "good" and "bad" parts of the soul are given equal treatment. I loved Boys from the Blackstuff, anything with Helen Mirren, and even Yes! Prime Minister. The characters were multi-dimensional.

I've never been that big of a soap fan, though. Sure, the stories tend to expose the best and worst of the human condition, but they progress at a snail's pace, taking forever! And the characters tend towards two or even one dimensions. A guy who's bad is always bad. A woman who's evil is also vain, jealous, deceitful and treacherous. A woman who's good is supportive, truthful and "natural." Men are always "strong" and "quiet." They never discuss their feelings unless they first a) get angry or b) have been seriously hurt emotionally.

So that's why I was happy to see a glimmer of reality enter into the "Zarf / Zoe" story-arc in All My Children. If you haven't been following the story, it goes something like this... There's a guy named Zarf. He's a rock-star and not an especially "good" guy. He eventually stops repressing his female identity, changes his name to Zoe and turns good. I might normally point out that just because one recognizes themselves as being transgender, it doesn't automatically mean you're nice, honest, cheery and so forth. But the arc seems to be about transcendence and redemption, concepts that are close to my heart, so I'll just shut up about that now.

I found the following clip on YouTube! It shows Zoe in a TG (Transgender) support group. The hook here is that all the men and women in the support group are real transsexuals who are telling their own stories.

Growing up a girl in a boys body was confusing enough. And when I hit my teens the messages I got from the media (mostly from Jerry Springer) were that transsexuals were erotic-dancers or heart-breakers who picked up hetero men just to humiliate them publicly. I just wanted to drive the kids to school in the mini-van, dress nice for an occasional night on the town and have someone buy me chocolates and flowers. So it was hard to square my feelings about my identity with the messages I was getting from the media. It's good that this generation is seeing that we're people. We make breakfast, we fold laundry, go to work and try to get to the aerobics class on time.

Jenny, who is the group facilitator in the clip, is the author of She's Not There : A Life in Two Genders. A memoir of her life and transition. Already an accomplished author before the publication of her memoir, she's the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Colby College.